ities: The problem with socialism, Margaret Thatcher once noted, is you eventually run out of other people's money. In progressive Chicago, that's hit home as Moody's has cut its credit rating to two grades above "junk." Chicago's finances are staggering under the weight of an unfunded pension liability that Moody's Investors Service has estimated at $32 billion, eight times the city's operating revenue. Chicago has a $300 million structural deficit. And Illinois law requires the city to up its 2016 contributions to its police and fire pension funds by $550 million. "This is an unfortunate wake-up call for anyone still...

Scandal: Documents from Judicial Watch show that Hillary Clinton's closest advisers knew from the onset, before she launched an inflammatory video lie, that Benghazi was a terrorist attack for which Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility. 'Mrs. Clinton, name an accomplishment," Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and prospective 2016 GOP presidential candidate, asked Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Last year, when ABC's Diane Sawyer asked the former secretary of state that question, Mrs. Clinton changed the subject, not even bothering to mention dodging sniper fire in Bosnia. Nor is she likely to mention Benghazi, a place now synonymous with...

If President Obama, who has warned ICE agents of consequences if they do their job, had a son, he might look like Jamiel Shaw Jr., a young African-American killed by an illegal alien who shouldn't have been here. Shaw was a Los Angeles high school star dreaming of a good life ahead when he was gunned down on March 2, 2008, while walking home. He was picked at random, police said, possibly as part of a gang loyalty test for the illegal alien who shot him. Charged with the crime was Pedro Espinoza, who'd been released just hours earlier from...

A solar-power project set to open next month in Nevada has fried 130 birds during tests and will soon join another solar farm in California in avian incineration. If as many birds being burned by solar power farms built in the U.S. were to wash up on our beaches soaked in crude oil from a leaking offshore well, the outrage would be deafening. But as with the wind turbines that now cover acre upon acre of former "pristine" countryside, what amount to avian Cuisinarts slicing and dicing everything that flies, including endangered species, only the crickets are chirping. House Minority...

ecurity: A video by Somalia's al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab group warns Minnesota's Mall of America may be a repeat of a 2013 mall attack in Kenya. The Second Amendment may be our best defense against terrorism. The immense Mall of America in Bloomington would indeed make an inviting target for jihadists intent on martyrdom. Its 520 stores, the most of any mall in the world, attracts 40 million people annually and is a global tourist destination. It's as inviting a target and as much of an iconic symbol of Western capitalism and culture as was the World Trade Center on Sept. 11,...

candal: Heavily redacted documents show a military response had been drafted in answer to the Benghazi terrorist attack by a group supporting "an Islamic state" in Libya. It also showed the attack wasn't inflamed by a video. It's taken Judicial Watch two years to obtain from the most transparent administration in history the 486 pages of documents pertaining to the military response to the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on our Benghazi diplomatic mission. They confirm what we have said repeatedly, that the Benghazi tale spun by President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was indeed a lie...

eadership: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America," candidate Barack Hussein Obama said on Oct. 30, 2008, just before his election as our 44th president. Was it just rhetoric? Many no doubt thought it was, chalking it up to boilerplate election-eve hot air. But now are we seeing — some would say tragically — what he meant. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is being raked over the coals for saying he doesn't really believe the president loves America, and he probably didn't do himself or the Republican any favors by saying that. Democrats...

ihad Enclaves: With names like Islamberg and Mahmoudberg, some 22 of what the FBI calls "enclaves" have been established across the U.S. by a group linked to a Pakistani militant group called Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The specter of 21 Christians being murdered "on the shores of Tripoli" in Libya where U.S. Marines first encountered Muslim forces — the Barbary pirates — and threats by the Islamic State against Rome show how President Obama's "JV team" has metastasized as a global threat. And, yes, it can happen here. The Islamic State is encouraging attacks on infidels in the West like the one...

Energy: Three million gallons of Bakken crude burning in rural West Virginia after an oil train derails in a snowstorm ought to underscore the environmental safety of replacing rail cars with the Keystone XL pipeline. One of the reasons President Obama says he'll veto the Keystone pipeline bill that, as a result of last November's GOP electoral gusher, has found its way to his desk is that it will only carry Canadian crude to foreign markets and is not worth jeopardizing the environment. Two things are wrong with that argument. The first is that Keystone XL will also bring Bakken...

Phony Numbers: The Obama administration says more than 11 million signed up for ObamaCare this year. Should anyone believe this number? Even if it's true, is it a sign of success? The answer to both is a resounding no.

errorism: As in Paris, where the White House insists four Jews in a kosher market were randomly selected for slaughter, the statement condemning IS beheading 21 Egyptians omits a key fact: all were Christians. Speaking of the Chapel Hill, N.C., murder of three Muslims, President Obama, as his FBI began an investigation into whether it was a "hate crime," issued a statement saying that "no one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like or how they worship." Indeed not. Yet, we could find no such sentiment or statement...

eadership: An administration that views climate change as a greater threat than terrorism blames its most recent foolish comments on cable news and poor word choice. Will Brian Williams be the next press secretary? According to President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and White House press secretary Josh Earnest, 26-year-old humanitarian worker Kayla Mueller was killed by global warming, not by an Islamic State that beheads and incinerates those who resist its barbarism. In trying to explain Obama's remarks on climate change and terrorism, Earnest told the Vox website, "The point that the president is making is that there...

tates: Illinois entrepreneur turned governor Bruce Rauner ends the practice of forced union dues for government workers who don't want to join a union as he pursues right-to-work zones to promote growth. In Illinois, they're called "fair share" dues collected from workers said to benefit from the collective bargaining of the unions they're in thrall to, whether they want to join or not, moneys collected by force to pay for that representation. "Fair share" is a favorite mantra to liberals, but not to newly elected Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. He believes that there's nothing fair about extorting money from people...

Political Correctness: The Army has announced that as a result of Congress' making victims of attacks by foreign terrorist acts eligible, the Fort Hood victims will get Purple Hearts, and civilians will get Defense of Freedom medals. That language broadened the definition of an attack on eligible victims to include an assault by "a foreign terrorist organization." The definition includes attacks by a perpetrator or perpetrators in contact with a foreign terrorist organization or "inspired or motivated by a foreign terrorist organization" prior to the attack. The Nov. 5, 2009, attack on Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Hasan, in which...

ies: Investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson reminds us the secretary of state who blamed Benghazi on a video once made up a story about courage under fire in Bosnia. Maybe Brian Williams can be her 2016 running mate. 'Nothing in life," Winston Churchill once famously said, "is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result," except perhaps in the minds of network anchors like NBC's Brian Williams and political candidates such as Hillary Clinton, who also claimed a brush with death in a war zone on her resume. Perhaps they can swap war stories. Former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson reminded...

mmigration: Aliens granted executive amnesty by President Obama will be eligible for tax credits for the years they worked here illegally. But wasn't amnesty supposed to benefit the economy and not drain the U.S. Treasury? Subverting the Constitution to grant millions of illegal aliens work permits and freedom from deportation apparently isn't enough for the Obama administration. It now intends, through the Internal Revenue Service, to subvert the tax code to let these illegals collect billions in retroactive Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) payments. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, an unindicted co-conspirator in the cover-up of the IRS Tea Party targeting...

Aggression: As Russian-backed separatist rebels continue their advance, it's becoming clear even to administration officials that Ukraine needs more help than first-aid kits and K-rations. A report issued Monday by eight former senior American officials urges the Obama administration to send — and send quickly — some $3 billion in defensive military equipment as it becomes increasingly evident that the effects of sanctions the president says have hurt Russia have not been apparent on the ground in Ukraine. Among the officials advocating the move, the New York Times reports, is former senior Pentagon official Michele Flournoy, once on the short...

ulture: An unlikely issue has entered the infant 2016 presidential campaign: Vaccines and required vaccinations. Let's hope the fact there's no scientific link to autism or anything else isn't lost in the political fray. Candidates will often look for an edge over their opponents. Thus, both New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky recently suggested that, while vaccinations are good, forcing parents to vaccinate their children might be too much. We believe vaccines are safe and should be routine, but concern about parents' rights is not unreasonable. What really gripes us, however, is listening to the...

Stimulus: Obama says jobs from the Keystone project aren't permanent and it's just one pipeline that will move foreign oil to foreign markets. But fixing the bridge he once used as a prop didn't create permanent jobs either. 'Let's set our sights above a single pipeline," the leader of the party of infrastructure told Congress in the State of the Union. But this Congress has 80 more Republicans than when he took office, and on Thursday the Senate rejected his admonition by a 62-36 vote. Eight Democrats crossed the aisle after a series of amendment votes, a process that had...

Arms Buildup: A senior weapons developer tells Congress that Beijing's massive defense buildup, emphasizing precision-guided and other advanced weapons, has placed the U.S. and its shrinking military at serious risk. 'I am very concerned about the increasing risk of loss of U.S. military technological superiority," Frank Kendall, deputy undersecretary for acquisition, said Wednesday. "We're at risk, and the situation is getting worse." He was testifying before the House Armed Services Committee at a hearing on the subject of defense and technological change. The Chinese were paying attention to U.S. military dominance in the early 1990s after we won the arms...

Defense: War clouds gather in the East China Sea as China, in one of a series of territorial claims against its neighbors, builds a helicopter base within attack range of Japan's Senkaku Islands, which Beijing claims as its own. When President Obama traveled to China last November, we don't suppose that he discussed with his Chinese counterparts their military buildup in the East and South China Seas and their ambitious territorial claims on island chains such as the Spratly, Paracel and Senkaku. As Bill Gertz reports in the Washington Free Beacon, commercial satellites observed construction of a Chinese military helicopter...

Transparency: The administration is said to be hiding for reasons of damage control a report on the soldier we traded five Taliban leaders for. Bowe Bergdahl's lawyers have already been given a charge sheet for desertion. Both Fox News and now NBC News have reported that Sgt. Bergdahl will be charged with desertion. "I have been told and confirmed by two other sources that his attorney has been given what we call a charge sheet," retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a respected military analyst, told Fox's Bill O'Reilly on Monday. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski quoted senior defense officials on Tuesday...

Defense Spending: The venerable A-10 Warthog, designed to stop Soviet tanks, and the perfect weapon to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State, as President Obama promised, faces a budgetary chopping block. We have noted the irony of how Obama was going to war against the Islamic State with weapons systems he had scrapped, ending the production runs of the F-22 Raptor and Tomahawk cruise missiles. They were dismissed by the administration as relics of the Cold War even as Russia was rearming and trying to reassemble the old Soviet Union. We've also mentioned the phasing out of the A-10 Thunderbolt,...

Washington University School of Medicine researchers have found that those patients who suffer from inflammatory bowel diseases also had a greater variety of viruses contained within their digestive systems than they found in the bowels of health volunteers. This, they believe, suggests that viruses somehow play a role in the development of this condition. ... “This is the tip of the iceberg. A significant portion of the viral DNA we identified in these patients is unfamiliar to us—it comes from newly identified viruses we don’t know much about,” explains senior study author Herbert W. Virgin. “We have a great deal...

Valor: When Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair at the 2012 GOP convention, many thought he'd lost it. Now more Americans are watching his story of hero Chris Kyle than saw the State of the Union. There was a sense of irony in President Obama praising himself for a "persistent, steady resolve" in fighting an Islamic terrorism he refuses to call by name. He delivered his State of the Union speech just as the U.S. military was moving the assault ships Iwo Jima and Fort McHenry into the Red Sea to evacuate American personnel, if necessary, from...

Taliban Swap: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the report on the possible desertion of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will be produced "fairly soon." Does it expose his trade for terrorists as another administration disaster? bfrrIt's bad enough that the Obama administration is conducting a clearance sale of al-Qaida detainees at Guantanamo, releasing the worst of the worst like a candy dispenser. But as the Islamic State spawns terror cells in Europe, and al-Qaida, the demise of which was greatly exaggerated, is linked to the terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris as revenge for...

Military Spending: In the face of an expansionist China seeking to dominate the East and South China Seas, Tokyo has set its largest defense budget ever to help defend islands that it rightfully considers Japanese territory. As its military, economy and ambitions grow, so too does China's assertiveness about control of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the larger South China Sea. Chinese military doctrine refers to establishing dominance over what it calls the "first island chain," which encompasses the East China Sea. Beijing has long declared the South China Sea to be its territorial waters and has...

Homeland Security: To keep out Islamic State terrorists, the Saudis are building a 600-mile-long barrier — complete with five layers of fencing, underground movement censors and radar cameras — on their northern border. If they can do it ... Good fences, it is said, make for good neighbors, which on a grand scale was the intent of the Great Wall of China in antiquity and the Israeli fences of more recent vintage. Both were designed to keep out intruders and to make sure all guests were invited guests. Unlike the Berlin Wall, they were built to keep hostiles out, not...

Energy Policy: In spite of dramatically lower methane emissions from fracking, according to the EPA's own data, the agency wants to impose draconian regulations on the oil and gas industry similar to those on coal. The new rules that the White House announced on Wednesday aim to cut oil emissions of methane, a target of environmental groups, by 45% below 2012 levels, despite the fact that the emissions already show a sharp decline even as shale oil and gas production has skyrocketed. This war-on-shale action mirrors the administration's war on coal, with EPA rules impossible to meet economically and sometimes...

State Government: Bruce Rauner became Illinois' 42nd governor on Monday, the first Republican since 2003. He inherits a state that's been dubbed "America's Greece," but it's another opportunity to show what a GOP chief executive can do. A big part of the GOP tsunami in 2014 occurred at the state level, with Republicans expanding their hold on governors' mansions and legislatures with wins in blue states such as Maryland, Massachusetts and President Obama's Illinois. The number of GOP governors has grown to 31 from 21, control of legislatures has expanded to 68 of 98 partisan legislative chambers, and Republicans now...

Security: In the wake of the Islamist terrorist attack in Paris, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani argues to reinstate a policy cancelled by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has arguably left the city as exposed as it was on Sept. 10, 2001. Although the Paris terrorist attack by Islamists has not been linked to any mosque, the historical record is dotted with similar attacks that have such links, including the Nov. 5, 2009, rampage at the Army base in Killeen, Texas, by Maj. Nidal Hasan that killed 13 and wounded 31 as the self-proclaimed "Soldier of Allah" shouted "Allahu...

Hypocrisy: Mexico's president tells ours that his country will supply any documents needed for illegal aliens to qualify under Barack Obama's executive amnesty. At the same time, Mexico deports more illegals than we do. In an Oval Office meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said that his administration "is ready to give (support) to the Mexican population living in the United States so that they can show the documentation that is necessary to prove that they have been in the United States prior to 2010" to meet the five-year requirement of Obama's amnesty plan and...

Congress: With polls showing most GOP voters in opposition to the Speaker's budget deal and saying they would "probably" or "definitely" prefer a new leader, a Tea Party favorite fires a shot heard around the political world. In 2010, House Speaker John Boehner loved the Tea Party. The grass-roots movement, which arose in opposition to manifestations of big government such as ObamaCare and unlimited taxation and regulation, put the GOP back in control of the House of Representatives and made Boehner Speaker. But by December 2013, Boehner loved the Tea Party and other conservative groups not so much. They had...

Republicans: Political purges may work in totalitarian states, but in a democracy they can be self-defeating. The senator who called the Tea Party "wacko birds" should realize the GOP's real enemies are called Democrats. It's been said that all politics is local, and normally a state party's internal squabbles would not be national news. But when they involve a former presidential candidate on an issue that will affect the selection of the GOP's 2016 presidential nominee and chances, we sit up and take notice. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who lost the 2008 election to Barack Obama and who is running...

Leadership: An Army couple is told to move their wedding from the 16th tee of a golf course so President Obama can play through. Is it any wonder that his approval rating among the military is at a record low? Just 15% of active-duty service members gave their commander in chief a thumbs-up in the most recent Military Times survey, with 55% saying they disapproved of the job that President Obama is doing. It certainly didn't help his image when two Army captains were told hours before their wedding that they had to move it so Obama could play through...

Regulation: Cures for cancer and Ebola having been found, the federal ubernannies have decreed that sprinkles should no longer adorn kids' ice cream because they contain the trans fat that liberal groups once pushed for. Come the New Year, the Food and Drug Administration, ignoring the principle that in most cases it's the dose that defines the poison, will issue new regulations designed to remove even trace amounts of hydrogenate oils, commonly known as trans fats, from our diets. Trans fats have been in our foods since the 1950s to increase shelf life and improve taste. A small amount appears...

Cover-Up: Reporter Sharyl Attkisson alleges the White House and, specifically, press secretary Josh Earnest are hiding official photos of what President Obama was doing the night four Americans died in the Benghazi attack. Other than possibly resting up for a fundraising trip to Las Vegas the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when an American ambassador and three others were killed in a terrorist strike on our Benghazi mission, we do not have a clear idea or a definitive timeline of what President Obama was doing during those fateful hours. As we asked in May 2013, where was the president during...

Black Crime: If President Obama had a son, he might look like 15-year-old Demario Bailey, one of three killed and 30 wounded in a typical Chicago weekend by thugs who wanted his Bulls jacket. As Bailey was being murdered while walking with his twin brother to a school basketball game, protestors of police brutality marched down Chicago's ritzy Michigan Avenue. They told high-end shoppers there that "black lives matter," held up their hands and said "don't shoot," and wore shirts that proclaimed "I can't breathe." The protest was part of a series of demonstrations also being held in Washington, New...

Crime: Talking about a war on cops motivated by race-baiting is mere "conjecture," according to the NAACP, which says that the assassination of two New York cops is an "example of the need for strict gun-control measures." After the tragic death of Eric Garner while resisting arrest, Mayor Bill de Blasio told New Yorkers how he had warned his biracial son to be wary of cops who, in any confrontation, might misinterpret his actions in a way they would not with a white suspect. Cops are the enemy, not the criminals they try to protect you from. Well, on Friday...

Defense: China has just tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that can deliver up to 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads, using technology given to them on President Clinton's watch to launch communications satellites. The Dec. 13 test of the DF-41 was the third for the new weapon. But it marked the first test of a multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle, or MIRV, technology and raises by an order of magnitude the nuclear threat to the U.S. as China continues its massive arms buildup. And disturbingly, the threat is in large part of our own making. "The DF-4, which could be...

Election 2016: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush embraces one-size-fits-all national education standards that would turn schools into re-education camps for the left. His decision could cause trouble with GOP primary voters. As is the tradition these days, Jeb Bush, brother of one former president and son of another, has announced via social media that he is preparing to run for president, setting the stage for another Bush-Clinton contest in 2016 should former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton get the Democratic nomination. To be the Republican nominee, Bush must run a gauntlet of primaries where he'll need to persuade Tea Party...

Amnesty: Pundits warn that a funding fight over the president's move to grant de facto amnesty to illegal aliens threatens a politically risky government shutdown. But there's something much more important at stake here. The Founders had good reason to give Congress the power of the purse: Short of impeachment, it's the most effective way to stop a lawless president from disobeying the will of Congress and usurping powers not granted by the Constitution. The question is: Will Congress use this power to thwart President Obama's shredding of the Constitution with his executive amnesty plan? Incoming Senate Budget Committee Chairman...

Rights: No longer fearing electoral revenge from the National Rifle Association, an outgoing Democratic Senate pushed to confirm an anti-Second Amendment radical, who thinks guns are a health issue, as the nation's top doc. A Democratic Senate that earlier balked at the nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy to be surgeon general of the U.S. no longer feared the possible electoral consequences of approving him in the wake of November's Republican tsunami. That, along with the GOP's obsession to not be blamed for a government shutdown, gave us a bad budget deal and the Democrats a chance to confirm Murthy. A...

National Security: It won't generate the buzz that torture allegations do, but a provision in the defense spending bill requires the White House to explain why Russia developed a cruise missile in breach of a 1987 treaty. President Ronald Reagan coined the phrase "trust but verify" regarding dealing with the Russians for good reason. American security was to be guaranteed through the strength of our will and the genius of our technology, not through pieces of parchment, handshakes, clinking glasses at conferences, or reset buttons. Enter President Obama and the age of flexibility, back-stabbing our allies on things like missile...

Law: If there really is a "war on women," it's being waged against a group of nuns who seek to honor their call to serve the dying poor without being compelled to provide contraception coverage to those who help them. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver heard oral arguments Monday in the lawsuit by the Little Sisters of the Poor challenging the ObamaCare abortion-inducing drug mandate that threatens religious liberty. The case of the feisty nuns challenges a bizarre "accommodation" offered by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS). Under its proposal, the Little Sisters can fill...

Fiscal Policy: A city teetering on the brink of insolvency passes a minimum wage that would reach $13 by 2019, higher than the minimum elsewhere in a state that just elected a Republican governor. What could go wrong? Ignoring the first rule of holes (when you're in one, stop digging), the Chicago City Council, in a Tuesday emergency session called by Mayor and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, voted 44-5 to raise the city's minimum wage from the current statewide level of $8.25 an hour to $10 on July 1, with future increases bringing it to $13...

Nuclear Waste: While Keystone XL remains a focus, the long-stalled repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, Nev., deemed safe in a recent report, is also good for the environment and for our energy future. The ghosts of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima continue to haunt and hinder the nuclear energy industry. Yet a report released Oct. 16 may revive both the spent fuel repository and the nuclear energy industry with it. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report, mostly finished in 2010 but delayed by Yucca Mountain foes such as the Obama administration and soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader...

Defense Threat: China conducts its third test in a year of a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to evade our missile and other defense systems, including the Aegis defense system guarding our carrier battle groups. As we downsize our military, scale back weapons procurement and development, China proceeds at top speed towards weapons designed to counter our once-huge technical advantage and qualitative superiority. Case in point is the third flight test of a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), dubbed the WU-14 by the Pentagon, following earlier tests on Jan. 9 and Aug. 7 of this year. The U.S. Navy is particularly concerned,...

Oversight: A House Armed Services Committee member asks for a probe into reports that money was paid in a failed attempt to ransom alleged deserter Bowe Bergdahl. And where's that Bergdahl investigation report, anyway? Back on Oct. 16 we noted that the Pentagon had completed its investigation into Sgt. Bergdahl's abandonment of his Afghan post. But the report by Brig. Gen. Kenneth Dahl would not be released, according to an Army spokesman, until the end of a review process that was likely to be conveniently lengthy, lasting at least until after the midterm elections. It has now been over six...

Border Security: President Obama's executive amnesty doesn't just spare the illegals who "mow our lawns" and "make our beds." It also springs from local jails criminals held for deportation, putting them back on the street. In a just-released fact sheet, the White House describes Obama's "immigration accountability executive action" as "cracking down on illegal immigration." The president's actions, it intones, "will help secure the border" and increase the chances that illegals "will be caught and sent back." In fact, Obamanesty increases the chances they'll commit dangerous crimes in our cities. According to a new memo from Department of Homeland Security...